Still so unlucky

...

A while later...

*KNOCK* *KNOCK*

Just shortly after his night-long reverie, Levi heard a soft knocking on the door.

"Cough, come in," Levi said clearing his throat, smoothing out his expression.

The door opened and Sir Lancelot walked in.

"Levi, how are you feeling now? You look worn out, did you not get any sleep?" He asked in a concerned, fatherly tone.

"I am fine, thank you for asking."

"Good then, I guess it's best you should know what going on now. " Lancelot said, his expression quickly turning stern.

"Your father sent a message home that arrived yesterday by carrier pigeon. In the letter, he sent news about the ongoing war and the possible fall of the capital. "

The sudden information was confusing, to say the least, well that was until he remembered that Algrim, the kingdom he is currently in is embroiled in a war with its neighbour from across the Morgan Channel, A kingdom by the name Hertalese.

Aden, his father in this world had been in the capital for a few weeks now helping with the war preparations when they got a whiff of an impending invasion from some of their foreign spies, but the invasion happened much earlier than anticipated, almost literally catching the residing nobility with their pants down.

His memories of the war details were very vague but Levi did know that the war wasn't supposed to happen until at least two months from now.

"When the message arrived your brother Sean quickly spread the news amongst the nobles to sow discord, right before he robbed the treasury and escaped." He continued.

"Hmm, I remember," Levi replied nodding.

After his 'brother' spread the news about their, 'impending doom', he immediately decided to loot the treasury and flee, though Lancelot and a couple of his father's loyal men tried to stop Sean, from Lancelot's tone he could guess they didn't succeed.

It was during the chaos that the previous Levi got injured when he took the shot for Lancelot.

Sean had robbed the treasury clean, and the other noble families had all fled with their men.

This was terrible news, especially now that most of his households' main knightage had gone to defend the capital. With the other noble families leaving, his father's fiefdom would lose a large portion of its defensive force.

"How many men do we have left?. " Levi asked with an exasperated sigh.

"Fifty-seven," Lancelot answered with a sigh of his own.

Hearing this Levi cringed in distress.

While that might seem like a large number, before the war this household alone had close to five hundred men, and if the other noble families who were sworn to his household were included that number could double.

For a fiefdom of Aden's size, fifty old men are nowhere near enough to maintain law and order or defend the town from harm.

Additionally, the capital's fall could spell doom for him given his father's political status and relationship with the royal family.

'Maybe I should just probably just run away, right?'

'Or I should start drafting another obituary for myself.' The young man mumbled inwardly.

'But looking on the bright side, at least this time I get to write it myself.'

He joked, but with an empty treasury and the lack of a reasonably sized military force, it was clear to him that his odds weren't looking too good at all.

Lancelot looked at him with hesitant eyes before sighing like he had been forced to make a very hard decision.

"If you don't want to stay we can flee tonight and... " He started but was interrupted midspeech

"What? No, I'm staying," Levi retorted casting Lancelot a side glance, inadvertently forcing a look of surprise on the viscount's face.

Half expecting Levi to decide to flee immediately, he was caught by surprise he heard his response. The young master wasn't known to be among the bravest of men, to say the least, hell you could even describe him as cowardly and you still wouldn't be doing justice.

But though the prospect of leaving all these problems behind seemed enticing, in reality, it won't make much sense in the long run.

Assuming the nobles hadn't fled nor treasury looted clean, there might have still been a lot that could have been done to salvage the situation, but now it's a different story altogether.

With no resources, there is very little are very few options to choose from.

'If all fails I'll run.' Levi thought drumming his fingers against the wooden desk by his bedside.

'I mean, who wants to die immediately after being reborn?'

'But I'm not going anywhere yet, at least not without trying to hold my ground first.'

'Just when I was thinking things were starting to look up for me. He sighed inwardly.

'I'm still so unlucky...'